By: Faustine

In reply to Dazzlyn.

I’m a bisexual woman who never speaks about who I am attracted to, so if I were written as a TV character that never mentioned being attracted to women or non-binary people while dating a man that would be realistic.

But in storytelling what happens purely off camera or entirely in a non-narrator character’s head simply doesn’t exist. The creators make choices. It may be entirely realistic to say that a macho bro male character with zero shown depth dating women is actually a super closeted gay man, but if a viewer is going to buy that there has to be scenes that set it up, even if it’s all “blink and you miss it” subtle cues that other characters don’t notice or teeny tiny private moments of dropping the mask for a heartbeat. Other characters acting like a character isn’t bisexual, without any reaction from the bisexual character, is also an invalidating choice on the part of the creators because what other characters say and do shape our perceptions of the world they inhabit and some characters are even designed to act as a stand-in for the viewer.

(Disclaimer: I’ve never watched Queen Sugar, and all I know about it comes from this article, but I think a lot about this from the perspective of other shows)